“The second statement by Elena White can be found in the book “The Great Controversy,” page 377, where the following is mentioned: “… in Ezra 6:14, it is said that THE LORD’S HOUSE WAS BUILT in Jerusalem by the decree of CYRUS, DARIUS, and ARTAXERXES, kings of Persia. These three kings, by issuing the decree and confirming and completing it, put it in the condition REQUIRED BY PROPHECY TO MARK THE BEGINNING OF THE 2,300 YEARS.” To begin with, the previous statement presents a serious and grave contradiction because it describes two different events, such as the building of the house of God, which was completed in 508 B.C. in the sixth year of Darius’s reign, which Mrs. White associates with the decree marking the beginning of the 2,300 evenings and mornings prophecy that supposedly began in 457 B.C.; 51 years after the house of God was finished and dedicated. The reason for the previous contradiction is that Elena White literally transcribed that phrase from her original source without considering whether it had a biblical and historical foundation. Our pioneers, due to their lack of education, adopted interpretations from renowned and educated scholars of the 18th and 19th centuries, some of whom graduated from recognized universities in England and the United States as theologians, doctors, and lawyers, who became governors and judges, of great credibility and high prestige. These scholars failed to discern that what is related in Ezra 6:14-15 referred exclusively to the construction of the temple and had no relation to the construction of Jerusalem. What confused them was the inclusion in the aforementioned texts of King Artaxerxes as a participant in the final construction of the temple, a participation that was not possible because the temple was completed approximately five decades before King Artaxerxes came to power. The mandatory question here is: Why did Ezra record King Artaxerxes as the last Persian ruler who contributed to the completion of the temple? Was it a copying error? It is possible; but it is also possible that out of gratitude to the king for what he did for the house of God by sending generous voluntary offerings for the service of the house, and the last temple utensils that remained in Babylon; he included him in the list of Persian rulers who participated in the completion of the temple. On the other hand, we must not forget that the book of Ezra was primarily written for the Jewish people, covering approximately ninety years, from Cyrus in 538 B.C., to the time Nehemiah lived, so it should not surprise us that Ezra, wanting to give relevance to the temple in the eyes of his own people, recorded that this pagan king, sovereign of a great empire, acknowledged the God of the Hebrews, so he included him as the last Persian king who contributed to the completion and functionality of the temple. One thing is certain: Artaxerxes could not issue any decree for the completion of the temple because when it was completed, he was a child or possibly not yet born. Also, Artaxerxes did not issue a third and final decree to start the construction of Jerusalem in 457 B.C., because we have no categorical record of such a mandate, which we do find in chapter 2 of Nehemiah, confirmed in the book “Prophets and Kings,” page 470, where the following is recorded: “NEHEMIAH BROUGHT A ROYAL DECREE, REQUIRING THE INHABITANTS TO COOPERATE WITH HIM IN THE REBUILDING OF THE CITY WALL.” If there is a categorical decree to start the construction of Jerusalem and its walls, unquestionably, we find it in chapter 2 of Nehemiah. In Ezra 7, 6, and 4, we only find conjectures like the one we are considering. Another factor that contributed to interpreting that the Daniel 8 prophecy began with the supposed third decree of Artaxerxes recorded in Ezra 6:14-15, was that Johann Petri’s interpretation in the mid-18th century, an interpretation adopted by many prophecy scholars, who proposed that the prophecy of the seventy weeks began simultaneously with the prophecy of the 2,300 evenings and mornings in 457 B.C. For more information, read in this blog the article titled :Three questions that Adventists cannot answer objectively and satisfactorily related to the prophecy of Daniel 8. Part IV. Due to the above, it would not be surprising if William Miller believed and adopted that interpretation, passing it on to our sincere pioneers, who naively ended up embracing it and transcribing it into our inspired books. Here, we must highlight the objectivity of the German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, who was a renowned theologian and philosopher of the 15th century, who argued that the 2,300 years extended from the time of Daniel 8’s vision to the coming of Christ, which he recorded in his book, “CONJECTURES ABOUT THE LATTER DAYS.” That title is what all the prophetic interpretations formulated in the following three centuries after Cardinal Cusa should have deserved because time has shown that these conjectures had no foundation, including that of William Miller, which, unfortunately, we adopted, forcing us to come up with new interpretative conjectures, which we can hardly support, as mentioned in more than fifty articles on this blog. Some ultraconservative Adventist scholars, unable to refute the aforementioned, and trying to support the statement we are considering, have gone to the extreme of affirming that the construction of Jerusalem should have begun with the building of the house of God. The previous statement presents the inconvenience that the prophecy of the 2,300 evenings and mornings could not have begun in 457 B.C. and ended in 1844 of our era; rather, it should have started in 538 B.C., when Cyrus issued the first and only decree to BEGIN the construction of the temple; therefore, the prophecy should have ended in 1763 A.D. William Shea, commenting on the possibility that the order to build Jerusalem could begin with the construction of the temple, mentions in his book: Daniel: A Guide for the Scholar, page 161, the following: “The prophecy identifies the starting point with the issuance of the decree or word ordering the reconstruction of the city of Jerusalem. It specifically mentions Jerusalem, so rebuilding only the temple would not fulfill this specification.” Blessings.
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